Doris Hohensee for Hillsborough 30 (Nashua Ward 3)

October 24, 2012

Doris Hohensee, an activist for family values and hopeful freshman legislator, is running for one of three seats representing Hillsborough 30 (Nashua Ward 3) along with David Schoneman, another newcomer.

Hohensee, a homeschooling parent and activist, has been fighting for parental rights since 1990 when the Legislature passed its first burdensome homeschooling law. She spent the next four Legislative sessions trying to convince other parents to civilly disobey homeschooling regulations, as she had done, and successfully showed that such parents could not be successfully prosecuted because the law violated their guaranteed rights.

As recently as 2010, Hohensee founded New Hampshire Families for Education to ramp up her cause and build support for legislative action. Since then, she has been trying to create legislative protections to local control of public schools and prevent interference with private schools and home schooling parents.

Due to these efforts, Hohensee was instrumental in passing HB 1571 this past session, which was sponsored by Rep. J.R. Hoell. The bill amended the educational evaluation for home-educated children by preventing evaluations performed by a local public school teacher from being reported to or tracked by the State Department of Education, and it changed the law so that the state can no longer end a home education program. She also fought for HB 542, also sponsored by Rep. Hoell, which allows parents with children in a public school to remove their children from class when they object to the material being taught.

If elected, Hohensee will continue to fight for educational freedom for New Hampshire’s parents and their children to ensure a high quality education for every child, she says on her Web site.

“A one-size-fits-all approach to education is not the most cost-effective or productive,” Hohensee says on the site. “Parents are in the best position to make decisions about their children’s education and future. I will work to enable parents to have a key role in education, to preserve local control and decision-making, and to ensure that each child, regardless of income level, has access to a high quality education, which fits their academic needs as well as respects how hard the taxpayers work each day for every dollar that pays for this public education.”

Hohensee’s Web site also indicates she will work to reduce state spending during these difficult economic times by bringing her ideals of fiscal responsibility, accountability and transparency to the State House and reducing the size of the state bureaucracy as well as taxes, fees and regulations. As a result, small businesses and entrepreneurs will be freer to innovate, expand and take risks, she writes. Similarly, she says environmental protections to ensure clean air and water must be balanced with private property rights and recreational uses of land as well as the needs of travel and tourism so that the state economy can thrive within a beautiful New Hampshire.

To fully reestablish local control of education, Hohensee has been circulating a plan on the Web to restore the school district system that used to exist prior to major consolidation of school districts by the Legislature in the 1870s. In the early 1800s, 10 voters could legally create a new school district by signing a petition to create one, and thousands existed in New Hampshire in the 1800s. In fact, the state used to impose penalties on local boards that didn’t divide districts upon request. To restore effective local control and excellence in education, Hohensee’s plan to re-establish a school district system could be used to allow parents to send their children to self-funded schools that respect creativity in education and control costs.